Word: tyrant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pullout from Somalia but said nothing about abandoning overflights in Iraq when two U.S. helicopters were mistakenly shot down in April 1994 and 15 Americans were killed. The difference between the two cases is obvious. The public understands that oil is a strategic interest, and Saddam Hussein--a tyrant hoping to build nuclear weapons--represents a threat to U.S. security. On that basis Americans can make a judgment and a choice...
...hitch was, he wanted to do so without federal permission. Although plainly illegal, in Carver's mind it was an act of civil disobedience--a frontier Boston Tea Party--warranted by the tyranny he and his fellow citizens in Nye had long endured. But in this case, the purported tyrant was the U.S. government...
...Army's super-secret Intelligence and Security Command in northern Virginia, Colonel Mike Tanksley sketches the barest outlines of the new Armageddons. These are only "What ifs?" he insists, so there cannot really be details. Yet his war scenario resounds with almost biblical force. The next time a tyrant out of some modern Babylon (Baghdad, Tehran or Tripoli, for example) threatens an American ally (Riyadh, Cairo, Jerusalem) the U.S. doesn't immediately send legions of soldiers or fleets of warships. Instead Washington visits upon the offending tyranny a series of thoroughly modern plagues, born of mice, video screens and keyboards...
...cyberwar revolution, however, poses serious problems for the U.S. Some are ethical: Is it a war crime to crash another country's stock market? More perilous are the security concerns for the U.S., where a tyrant with inexpensive technology could unplug NASDAQ or terrorist hackers could disrupt an airport tower. Giddy excitement over infowar may be shaken by an electronic Pearl Harbor. Last year the government's Joint Security Commission called U.S. vulnerability to infowar "the major security challenge of this decade and possibly the next century...
Europe's benchmark bloodsucker is generally considered to be Vlad the Impaler, an inspiration for Dracula. Andrei Codrescu's novel The Blood Countess (Simon & Schuster; 347 pages; $23) offers an equally unattractive alternative: Elizabeth Bathory, a 16th century Hungarian tyrant alleged to have killed 650 girls in the belief that bathing in their blood would preserve her youth and beauty. Though never tried for mass murder, Bathory is said to have been confined to a room of her castle, where after five years she died...